Can Pakatan's Free-Healthcare-For-All Pledge Be Kept?

Access to health care is one of the foremost policy concerns in modern democracies, with serious consequences for our young but ageing society. Pakatan Rakyat have offered free healthcare for all Malaysians in response. Can this be done?
The answer appears to be no. Pakatan is offering an experiment doomed to failure, rather than building incrementally on a successful system.
"Every Malaysian is entitled to go to any government hospital to get prompt, competent and free healthcare," Pakatan claims, a laudable attempt to ensure that the rich and the poor both receive the medical care they need.
A true national health service, such as what the UK and Canada offer, is expensive, yet Pakatan immediately rejects any funding mechanism such as 1Care (called a "healthcare tax" in a dishonest example of political rhetoric). There is no talk of funding, except that "savings from abolishing monopolies" will help fund "specialist treatments to the low-income group for complicated surgeries".
At most, this represents a tiny fraction of costs.
Every other industrialised nation has run healthcare experiments for decades, and there is a point of agreement: when a service is offered for free, the people will demand more and more of it. The UK and Canada ration the provision and timing of health services. The U.S. makes emergency care free for all, but specialised care is only available without cost for the old and the poor. Japan and Europe employ a patchwork of systems with variable – but rapidly rising – costs. Inexplicably, Pakatan reject all of this data.
Outside of the UK and Canada, there is broad agreement that the best solution is to provide a mix of public and private healthcare solutions, and Pakatan embraces this by promising "free healthcare for all Malaysians through government hospitals while incentivizing the private sector to provide healthcare services at a reasonable rate." Yet how would the private sector be "incentivised"? Why use the private sector if government hospitals will ensure "free healthcare for all Malaysians"?
Today, the government subsidises 90 per cent of healthcare, ensuring availability while avoiding the free service danger. Pakatan decry this as extravagant and corrupt spending – and yet promise to spend even more.
Pakatan does not explain why the current system should be destroyed, despite successes such as halving the new HIV case rate since 2005. The current system certainly can be improved, and should be. Barisan Nasional has expanded the reach of care by allocating RM66.1 billion to the sector. BN has also committed to upgrading 350 Government clinics, and opening another 70 new clinics, for a total of 245 with those built so far.
Instead Pakatan promises a new system, with free and expansive service and a redundant private sector. The party promises something better and more expensive, without cost, which we know – from watching other countries – cannot be done.
The provision of healthcare is a serious issue, and Pakatan deserves credit for trying to improve it. Yet they didn't, and thus deserve no credit for their unserious proposal to this serious issue.